In addition, for those who want to pursue Western martial arts, below is
an overview contributed by Parke about the books made available through
Chivalry Bookshelf Press.

Western
Martial Arts Books Overview - Parke

Western martial arts have been
exploding in popularity since the mid-1990s. Every year, more
historical fighting manuscripts come to the attention of martial artists and
new translation projects are begun. This is an exciting time for the
field as new discoveries are being made all the time and the Internet has
helped to create a global community of like-minded individuals.

Below is a beginner’s guide to some of
their books. It’s a beginner’s guide in both the sense that it is written
for people trying to figure out where to start and the sense that it’s
written by a beginner (with all the caveats that implies). So this should
be read as a guide about what the authors’ want to accomplish and how
clearly they do it, not a vouching of the accuracy of their interpretations
of historical materials.

Two points need to be made about all
the books. First, they all solely address one-on-one combat.
Second, there is a significant bonus:
most of the authors are active on
Sword
Forum International’s Historical European Swordsmanship forum and are
generous about answering questions. (Just be sure to use the search feature
to check whether your question has already been answered. Some questions
keeping coming up over and over.)

Longsword

The most popular weapon among students
of historical European martial arts is the longsword,
even though numerically speaking, it seems to have been a small percentage
of weapons used on the battlefield. This sword was primarily used with both
hands but could be used one-handed, leading to its other names:
the hand-and-a-half sword and
because it did not fit neatly in the categories of either one- or two-handed
swords, the bastard sword.
It was only used by knights once plate armor developed to the point that
carrying a shield was no longer necessary. A number of historical treatises
discuss using a longsword
with and without armor.

Its modern popularity stems from the
weapon’s romanticism and its versatility. It gets plenty of screen time in
fantasy and medieval movies. ARMA
and other groups teach the longsword
as a foundational weapon as it incorporates so many of the fundamental
principles of attack and defense.

Modern martial artists have focused on
reconstructing two traditions in which longswords
played a prominent part, the German tradition of Johannes Liechtenauer and
the Italian tradition of Fiore de' Liberi. These traditions, despite using
the same kind of weapon, had different philosophies, different techniques,
and, what’s tough on beginners, different vocabularies.

At the risk of being a little crude,
the German tradition was based on the recognition that there was no way to
hold a longsword
that perfectly defended from all kinds of attacks. Therefore, it is
important to attack your opponent’s weak spots before he attacks yours. The
focus is on attacking when you have the initiative and getting it back when
you lose it (which in practical terms means that each defensive maneuver
includes counterattacks).

Also, the German tradition elaborated
numerous techniques for what to do when your sword is in contact with your
opponent’s sword (binding). The techniques, called windings, protect you
from your opponent while putting you in position to attack like pushing your
opponent’s tip aside while lining up your own tip for a thrust to the face
or chest. The German tradition also emphasized a handful of master cuts to
be used to break opponent’s guards. (Guards, also called wards or in
Italian, posta, are set ways of positioning your body and weapon, each with
its advantages and disadvantages. Holding the sword over your head, for
example, allows you to quickly cut downwards but can be tiring and exposes
your arms to attack.)

While the German tradition emphasizes
the initiative, the Italian tradition is more subtle in its principles. It
is difficult to pin down. Sometimes it is characterized as defensive but
leading interpreters have said that this is a drastic oversimplification and
that it is possible to be quite aggressive in the Italian style. Perhaps
one way to put the difference is that the Liechtenauer tradition focuses on
how to attack a person standing in a guard while the Fiore is much more patient
to wait to attack when the person is vulnerable as they are shifting between
guards.) Probably the safest way to distinguish between the German and
Italian approaches is to an accumulation of many slight differences more
than any clear cut division.

Although these approaches might
differ, modern students often keep themselves abreast of both traditions. A
number of people develop an eclectic style that borrows from both. (And
there is some evidence that the traditions at least minimally influenced
each other.) Fortunately, the starting points for someone wishing to begin
studying each tradition is fairly obvious.

German tradition

Christian Henry Tobler has written two
well-received books on the German tradition. The better one for beginners
is the second one,
Fighting with the German Longsword.
Drawing on a range of historical texts, it is a step by step guide, complete
with solo and paired drills, to train properly for the footwork, the grip,
the primary and secondary guards, the basic cuts, the master cuts — a
chapter on each of the five — and grappling. Of all the books currently
available on the longsword,
this has the most coherent training system. Its one drawback is that while
the book shows front and side views of many of the actions, the sequences
of photographs could have had more photographs taken from the middle of the
techniques (but then, so could almost every other martial arts book). The
bulk of this book is devoted to the longsword
in unarmored combat. It also has chapters on armored combat with both the
longsword
as well as the spear. (As plate armor renders cuts ineffective, the
emphasis shifts towards thrusts into vulnerable parts of the armor.)

Johannes Liechtenauer only codified
ideas about combat in the form of short, cryptic verses that by themselves
are all but incomprehensible. Subsequent masters of arms wrote
commentaries that explained the meaning of the Liechtenauer’s ideas and
added some of their own. The one that has received the most attention is by
Sigmund Ringeck.

Tobler’s first book,
Secrets of German Medieval Swordsmanship,
is a translation and interpretation of a Ringeck text. The book covers the
longsword,
sword and buckler, wrestling and
equestrian combat. Except for some minor organizational shuffling, the book
follows Ringeck closely, meaning that its pedagogy is more geared towards
the medieval mind than the modern. This makes it less obvious how to train
with it, which is the benefit of the second book.

The books are physically quite
different.
Fighting with the German Longsword
is a trade paperback.
Secrets is a gorgeous
oversized hardbound book. If you were to get just one,
Fighting with the German Longsword
is the better choice for a beginner, but if you’re really interested in
this, you’ll likely eventually own both.

A different interpretation of Ringeck
can be found in David Lindholm and Peter Svärd’s Sigmund Ringeck’s
Knightly Art of the Longsword, which is published by Paladin Press.
This good-looking hardback has a nice feature: beneath every line drawing is
another drawing showing where the feet are and how they move during a
technique.

Italian tradition

The main beginner’s book on the
Italian tradition is Guy Windsor’s
The Swordsman's Companion.
The book has numerous descriptions that would be of interest to even those
not studying the Italian tradition. It describes sword-fighting principles,
first at length and then reduced down to a one page appendix. Windsor has a
knack for clarifying through categorization (e.g., the nine footwork
options, the six types of sparring opponents). Especially helpful for those
with no prior experience in martial arts, there are two appendices outlining
a warm-up session and a training program.

Like Tobler’s
Fightingbook,
it contains solo and paired drills and an initial discussion on equipment.
It also includes an analysis of how the seals (“signo”) of the Italian
masters symbolize their principles through different animals — sounds
strange but it is quite interesting — and a chapter on unarmed drills. The
parts on specific plays, however, could really use a glossary as there are a
lot of Italian terms. (Glossaries can be found online, however, and there
are always Post-Its.)

Windsor’s book feels very different
from
Fighting with the German Longsword.
It feels more like a training program to use the longsword
against all kinds of attacks and defenses instead of a tightly focused plan
to destroy someone (like the German approach). This makes the book feel
more diffuse but potentially more dynamic. (Not everyone would agree with
that comment, however.)

The translation of Filippo Vadi’s
fifteenth century
Arte Gladiatoria is a more
advanced book. While it is historical treatises like this that make
medieval and renaissance martial arts possible, they do not offer much
guidance for beginners as it is not necessarily clear how to translate the
color plates and their brief descriptions to effective techniques. But
again, if you stick with the Italian tradition, you’ll likely want to get it
eventually.

Sword and Buckler

To those grown up on Hollywood movies
and the “tower” shields of fantasy and roleplaying, the buckler, a little round
shield sometimes not much bigger than a Frisbee, looks underwhelming. But
this modest shield, when coupled with a one-handed sword, balanced
deadliness and convenience, which made it popular in historical times. As
Stephen Hand and Paul Wagner argue in an essay in
Spada, the
modest buckler
provided enough cover of the obvious lines of attack (mainly to the hands)
to allow you to close in with your opponent and deliver lethal blows. (And
some bucklers had a
spike mounted on them, making them dangerous offensive weapons.)

The oldest recovered medieval fighting
manuscript — the Royal Manuscript I.33 — is exclusively for unarmored sword and buckler combat. The two
main books for studying it are
The Medieval Art of Swordsmanship
by Jeffrey Forgeng, which includes the color prints of I.33 and a
translation of the accompanying text, and Medieval Sword and Shield
by Paul Wagner and Stephen Hand, which is an interpretation of the
manuscript.

The book by Wagner and Hand is a model
of clarity for martial arts books. It lays out the underlying principles
and their application with pictures that show not only what an attacker
wants to happen but how to defend against it. The I.33 manuscript is German
and shares the emphasis on initiative. (And recall that Tobler’s
Secrets of German Medieval Swordsmanship
also had a section of the sword
and buckler.)

Round shield and sword

The larger shields popular in film and
epic fantasy were falling out of favor just as men began working writing
sword manuals, leaving us with no known account of how to use them. Paul
Wagner and Stephen Hand — the I.33 guys — figured out a way to reconstruct
the use of round shields
by using German master Hans Talhoffer’s advice on shields for judicial
duels. This article can be found in
Spada.

Hungarian cavalry sabre

Spada also
contains an article on the all-but-forgotten Hungarian cavalry sabre. If your idea of what
a curved sword can do comes from the
katana, this article will be a pleasant surprise. The Hungarian
sabre has a false edge
near the tip — that is, near the tip it is sharpened on both sides and not
just the main cutting edge. This allows techniques like a grappling move in
which you swing your sword back over your sword as you grab your opponent’s
hands (raised over his head for a downward strike). The curve of the sabre allows the blade to go
behind your back and have the tip curve around to hit your opponent at waist
level.